Love's Suicide
by Mandolin77
Summary: "My child killed himself!" Francis tries to throw the words at him, tries to deny their meaning by using them as a weapon, but he trips over the syllables and they come out sounding like a confession instead. FrUk
1. Chapter 1

I really don't need to be starting new stories. ^^;; But this one has been on my computer for months, so I thought I'd post it and see what kind of response I get. Anybody want to see more?

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Arthur gropes in the darkness for the phone that has dragged him out of sleep, pressing buttons angrily as he shoves it against his ear. "What the bloody hell do you want this time, Alfred?"

Instead of the expected American response, a woman's soft voice asks, "Is this Mr. Arthur Kirkland?"

Arthur stops for a moment, thrown off balance. "Er… y-yes. Speaking."

"Sir, our records show that you are the step father of Matthew Williams—correct?"

He pauses and stutters out, "Yes."

"Mr. Kirkland, we have your son here in the emergency room. He's in very critical condition."

He blinks into the darkness and sits up in bed, glancing at the neon display of the clock. "Matt? You have... Matt there?"

"Yes. He's been here for over an hour, but we couldn't find any contact information."

"He's not—what happened? Is he alright?" Arthur swings his feet onto the floor and stands shakily, reaching for the lamp on the bedside table. The yellow light that washes out doesn't do much to dispel the shadows.

"I'm sorry, but we're not allowed to give out that information over the phone. I know it's very early, but is it possible for you to come down here?"

"His… father" –Britain stumbles a little on the word—"might be able to. Have you tried calling him?"

"Several times. We couldn't get through."

"Fuck. Okay." He rubs one side of his face and mutters, "I'll be there… in a few minutes. Tell Matt to hold on."

She gives him the address of the hospital, located right smack in the middle of Nowhere, Canada, and the Englishman scribbles it down on a dirty yellow legal pad he keeps by the bed in case of emergency. The pen keeps dying in the middle of words. Arthur wonders why it hasn't occurred to him to throw it out before.


	2. Chapter 2

Half an hour later he is stumbling through the white automatic doors and still rubbing sleep out of his eyes, dressed in wrinkled jeans and a ketchup-stained button-down that Alfred refuses to pay the bill for. (Why the hell do you have to _dry clean_ all your clothes, Iggy? Can't you just be normal for once?)

A young woman at the front desk stands as he approaches, smiling the fake, tired smile of someone who has seen too much death. "You must be Mr. Kirkland."

_Small town_, Arthur thinks, and then shakes his head. Small fucking _world_. "It's a pleasure."

That's a lie.

The woman extends her hand, and instead of shaking it the way he ought to Arthur just passes her his fabricated ID card—the laminated white one that proclaims him to be _normal_ the way Alfred wants him to be. "Can I see my son?"

She glances at the card, the corners of her mouth turned down even as she tries to force another smile. "I'm afraid he's in OR right now, but he should be out soon. Why don't you have a seat?" She gestures to a row of hard black chairs, mostly empty except for a single anxious mother and a gangly teenage boy.

"He's… in surgery?"

"It's very minor," she assures him, "don't worry."

"Was he—" Arthur pauses, wondering what one earth would be terrible enough to land a nation in the hospital. "Was he in a car accident?"

"I'll send one of the doctors out to speak to you," she begins, and starts to turn away.

"Please." Arthur runs one hand through his hair, frightened to realize it is shaking. "Please, I have no idea what's going on."

The woman looks at him, her eyes wide and conflicted, and she looks so much like Matt for a moment that he has to fight down the urge to embrace her. "Your son—your _step_-son—swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills. He's had his stomach pumped already, but he's bleeding internally. The surgeon is just going to repair the rupture to make sure the bleeding stops."

Arthur blinks in shock. Matthew tired to…? And all of a sudden he realizes what the words mean and everything hurts in a way that is far too real. "Why would he _do_ that?"

"I'm sorry," she whispers, "I really don't know. Would you like some coffee?"

He doesn't answer, just stares into the empty space of the wall. Matt had always been a quiet, introverted child, so unlike his rambunctious twin, but he was a good lad. It had never even crossed Arthur's mind that he might be unhappy.

The woman pushes a Styrofoam cup into his hand, and his fingers curl around it out of reflex. "Oh." He glances down at it. "Thank you."

"It helps." She directs him into one of the waiting room chairs and there is nothing left to do but sit and think and sip the coffee that scalds his throat.


	3. Chapter 3

Two hours later there is still no Matthew. Britain is the only one left in the big white room; the teenager's friend came limping out on one bandaged leg, grinning like an idiot, and the mother sitting beside him was taken into a private room at the back of the hospital. It didn't matter anyway because he could still hear her screams, and he can't help but wonder who she's lost.

He wonders if she will ever be found.

_I'm so sorry to inform you… _We tried but it was just too late; we lost him. We lost her. Nature has sinned against you in the most unnatural way, and you are going to have to bury your own child. They fought valiantly, bravely, there was nothing we could do… I am so sorry.

Arthur knows it shouldn't bother him; he has seen more boys and girls die than this whole town combined. And Matthew, as a nation, _can't_ be killed while his people still stand—and yet somehow the thought doesn't console him at all.

There's the soft swish of automatic doors and Arthur looks up as hurried footsteps enter, wondering to himself if he can stand one more tragedy today. He's surprised to realize he recognizes the exhausted face—recognizes it so intimately that he could know the exhaustion even without the face. He stands up and Francis rushes toward him.

"Art'ur!"The Englishman makes out his own name through the heavily accented French, and his chest hurts a little to see how the fragile the other man looks, dressed in white linen pajamas and a winter coat with grimy boots shoved on both feet. His hair is loose and long and matted, rumpled on one side, and there are smears of mascara still clinging to his baby-blue eyes. "Where is _mon lapin? _Where is Mathieu?"

"He's… they told me he's fine. He's coming out of surgery right now."

That's not entirely true, he hasn't heard anything all night, but Arthur doesn't have the heart to say anything else. Francis looks broken enough as it is. "They are _operating_? On my child? On my baby?" His voice is gaining pitch with every word, and the one of the nurses pokes her head out to check on them.

"Shut up," Arthur mutters, but Francis' heart isn't the only one that's breaking so he doesn't add _git_ at the end. "I just told you, he's fine. We can see him in a little while."

"_Mon Mathieu_," Francis sobs. "They are cutting open _mon Mathieu_."

"Lots of people get surgery, you idiot. The doctors here do this every day."

"B-but he is so small. They will 'urt 'im!"

Arthur grabs his wrist roughly, and then thinks better of it and twines their fingers together instead. "Look, you melodramatic arse, Mattie's going to be fine. He's a strong lad, alright?"

Francis sniffs quietly and squeezes Arthur's hand. "_Oui." _The silence stretches between them before he turns his eyes away to ask, "Who was it?"

"Who was it?" Arthur repeats dumbly.

"That was killed…?"

"Oh." He still thinks Matt is suffering from the death of an official, Arthur realizes, and he doesn't know how to explain. "He—no. No one was killed, Francis. Canada's okay."

"Que veux tu dire?" Francis blinks up at him, smeared-blue eyes wide open with worry, and he looks so much like a child that he almost can't stand to look at him. "He is… he is in the 'ospital, _non_?" There is a pause and he adds, suddenly, "Art'ur, what 'appened?"

"Mattie took a whole bottle of pills and it… it ripped up his stomach."

England has to grab Francis' arm to keep him from collapsing, their other hands still twined together as the smaller man cries. And God, Arthur thinks, he looks so small.

"No… _mon Dieu_, no. He wouldn't!" There are more words that Arthur can't make out through the teary accent, something about suicide and love—and, really, isn't that the story of the world? Birth and life and death and love, and the ties that keep us bound to one instead of the others. They stand there in the foyer of an empty emergency room and that's what Arthur thinks about, how he is the ancient British Empire and how he is holding the one man that could actually kill him, and how he loves this man and their child and how his lungs are aching because it's hard to breathe with Francis sobbing against him like that.

"Shh," is all the Englishman can think to say. "Shh."

"My child killed himself!" Francis tries to throw the words at him, tries to deny their meaning by using them as a weapon—_How dare you try to comfort me, you insolent bastard—_but he trips over the syllables and they come out sounding like a confession instead.

Arthur tightens his hold and whispers, "He's not dead."

"He is." The emptiness in France's voice scares Arthur more than the yelling ever could, and he pulls the golden head to his shoulder because he doesn't know what he should do.

"You're so _stupid_ sometimes, Francis, you know that?"

The sobbing ceases momentarily and England winces, reaching up to tangle his fingers in dirty blonde hair. He wants to be comforting, he really, really does. He wants to be what Francis' needs him to be, all soft hands and quiet inner strength… but he can't. He isn't. All he has is curse words and ketchup stains and overdue dry-cleaning and an empty Styrofoam cup.

Oh, and a false ID. He has one of those, too, because he's normal, normal, normal just like he's supposed to be—and it's killing him that he's still not enough.

"I'm sorry," France mumbles, and makes to pull away. "I'm sorry, I should not 'ave…"

Arthur tightens his grip and fights to speak through the emotion in his throat. "Never mind."

"Art'ur…"

"It's fine, Francis," he manages, and he sounds angry because he's trying so hard not to cry. "Never mind."

Blue eyes glance up at him from under a halo of matted gold hair, and England reaches down and wipes a tear out of the corner of one of them, smearing mascara. "You shouldn't sleep in your make-up."

Francis gifts him with a small smile and answers, "According to you, I s'ould not wear make-up at all."

The sentence sounds ridiculous in his accent, made heavier by the sleepless stress of the night, and Arthur has to return the smile. "You French are all the same."

"_Oui." _For once in his life Francis doesn't try to argue, just lays his head against Arthur's shoulder and sniffles quietly. The Englishman reaches into the pocket of his jeans, trying to find a handkerchief, and comes out with a crumpled Kleenex instead.

"Here," he says, and shoves it into France's hand. The other man says a soft thank you and steps away a little to wipe his nose delicately on one corner of the tissue.

"I thought you were looking for a condom," he quips after a moment, dabbing at his eyes, and Arthur glances at how the tissue comes away with dark crescent smudges.

"Wanker."

"_Et vous m'aimez en tout cas__."_

"Yeah, yeah," he mutters, and rolls his eyes when Francis smirks in his direction. "Why the bloody hell are you wearing pajamas, anyway?" It's not as though he can _see_ anything through the fabric, but there's something that makes him uncomfortable about the way they hang off the man's tiny frame; he can't stand the idea of Francis being fragile.

"I 'ad no time to dress," he explains, and carefully folds his fingers around the Kleenex. Arthur thinks about asking for it back, but he's afraid the Frenchman might take him seriously and he has enough snot of his own without carrying around someone else's. "I came 'ere as fast as I could."

Britain wants to protest (Yeah? I was in a hurry, too, but somehow _I_ still managed to put on a goddamn shirt) but just then he catches sight of a doctor walking towards them, clipboard tucked under one arm. He wonders for just a moment if there are hidden cameras somewhere, because he has the distinct feeling they are in the middle of a scene from some sort of medical soap-opera. He runs a hand through his hair as France turns around.

"_Mon Dieu." _

"Hello," the man greets them in a soft Canadian accent, "I'm Doctor Wilson." He extends one hand towards Francis politely and Francis just stares at him, blinking, until Arthur has to reach around him to shake the hand that's been offered.

"He's… French," Arthur explains, and the doctor smiles a little and translates the sentence into France's native tongue. This time the blonde responds on cue.

"_C'est gentil de votre part d'être venu_," Wilson says, and then adds in English, "Thank you for coming. I take it you are Matthew's family?"

"I am his _pape,_" Francis tells him, probably ruining his image as the helpless foreigner although the doctor simply nods.

"And you?" he asks Arthur.

"His step-dad," the Englishman answers, and the sentence feels strange on his tongue because even though it is absolutely true, Matthew has never felt the need to qualify the word _father_ with anything else.

Francis glances back at Arthur nervously, squeezing his hand. "_Comment est il_?"

"He's a strong boy," is the doctor's answer, which means it's bad news, and France knows this so he takes up crying again. "I think he'll pull through."


End file.
